I was quite excited by evdb because I am a big fan of calendars and subscribing, having been a .Mac subscriber for some time. I have learned to not only enjoy, but rely on having my own calendar follow me across different computers and even into my mobile phone.

So I posted my discovery to the mailing list of my group of friends and got this reply :

— J. wrote:
> I was going to say well Matt I don’t see Sydney listed but then I did
> a search. First time for me, never heard of it and I don’t see a need,
> what brings people to the site.

So my reply followed, and once I re-read it I figured I should put it out here for the rest of you to play with as well:

I think it would be event co-ordinators that bring people to the site to begin with. By listing your event there you get the advantage of being searchable in one spot – naturally as the host (evdb.com) you want to get big before anyone else comes into the space, but hey.

By registering as a user you can save searches as a ‘smart calendar’, “so what” you say? Well they do offer these features :

* For every event you get a set of iCalendar and RSS feeds that anyone can subscribe to.

This means I can use the site to have events pushed towards me, instead of having to go out and find them. Either subscribing with my calendar app or reading the RSS feed of what is effectively a permanent search of events in my chosen location or with a certain keyword. This is powerful stuff because it removes an action on behalf of the customer (I don’t have to find your event, it comes to my calendar!)

* Create calendars and then publish them anywhere online using pre-built designs or your own styles!

How many people can publish a nice looking calendar on their club/association/business website?

* More people can find out about your events! In EVDB they’ll be searchable and alert-able.

By centralising event info in a consistent format you give a leg up to any search engine that cares to read your format, benefiting everyone in the loop.

This may be the first time I’ve been away and had wireless access, so I had to post (thanks Cain!)

This is also the first time we’ve been to ‘the snow’ – I have seen snow before but this is the first time I have gone somewhere because of the snow. Ditto for the family, although the kids haven’t even seen snow before. That’s probably why the keep wanting to race outside in their pyjamas🙂

Zowie. I was under the mistaken impression that there were only two eBay tools for us Mac users these days … so i went out searching and found an interesting list on a site called The Auction Software Review – go figure🙂

Professor Ishiguro believes that it may prove possible to build an android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period.
“An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes,” he said.

“More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were a woman.”